From delusion to hope

I am somewhat of a pessimistic optimist. Oxymoronic? Yes. Pretentious? Certainly. But I consider it the most accurate way of characterising my outlook that was always prepared for the worst, but able to bear it because things, one day, might get "better".

Years ago, I invested my hopefulness in mass political movements, believing that with the right chord-striking campaign or even party leader, the country would be mobilised and vaguely defined change would follow.

I remember the great expectations in the air when, during the election campaign leading up to the 2013 general election, former prime minister Joseph Muscat promised so many positive changes after 25 years of Nationalist administration that eventually was on the wane and out of steam.

He promised a new approach that would move Malta forward. Indeed, he did so, but in the wrong direction. The country has moved from delirium to disenchantment. From a blissful honeymoon to an acrimonious divorce, we no longer speak of the Maltese dream but rather of the Maltese morass, where the Labour Movement can still win elections, but with declining margins and worse perceptions. An era of political regression and social resistance in the face of its implications.

The Labour vision entailed only an attempt to recentralise power but not an effort to reconstruct and remodel the State. An ambitious but ill-fated project based on reforms but not enough of them, built upon corruption and undone by it. It did not seek to make the pie bigger, but to slice it up among party stalwarts and privileged contractors. It did not really seek more competition, but state-administered rent-seeking that ended up shoring up crony capitalism. It did not seek to combat impunity but rather to take advantage of it.

Today, Malta is saddled with a government that launched structural reforms that were celebrated at the time of their approval but diluted or sabotaged at the time of their implementation. It forced acceptance of top-down reforms without seeking bottom-up consensus. In the case of education reform, it forced acceptance of a rollout that did not consider the views of entrenched unions unable to comprehend what the reform entailed.

A government that looks like the lamest of all lame ducks. Unquestionably, "better" has not come to pass. Material conditions for Maltese have measurably degraded. In-work poverty has risen to record highs; many children in poverty live in households where all adults are working. Cut through the protestations about increases in public spending and look at the reality: for many people, standards of living are the worst they have been. In real-world terms, incomes have remained stagnant or shrunk, while the cost of living — or more accurately, the cost of just about surviving — has shot up thanks to a steep rise in just about every basic expense.

Marked atrophy in our quality of life and crumbling anchor institutions have contributed to increasing disillusionment with the ability of party politics to create change. Trust in politicians has sunk to its lowest rate on record. A growing percentage of Maltese view political representatives as out for themselves. Voter turnout for general elections threatens to remain consistently lower than ever. Partisan dealignment means the number of people who once strongly identified with a political party has declined.

But for those people, what are their politics now that they have no parliamentary anchor? What do they actually believe in? Perhaps they wanted things to get "better," but what did that even mean? Where should they put all that hope if they do not want it to curdle into apathy and nihilism?

The necessary optimism that keeps the political self moving feels almost impossible if you are painfully, obsessively aware of every social ill that needs amending. You cannot care too much, but you can be rendered immobile by the sheer scale of the work that lies ahead. However, amid the muck of our current circumstances, I am noticing some green shoots sprouting in the form of increased non-party political activity from the people around me.

Elsewhere, I see people volunteering, campaigning and helping out. Most of them do not view these acts as explicitly "political" (despite the grassroots being the bedrock of politics) because they are not tied to traditional parliamentary parties. Instead, there are distinct goals attached: protection of the environment, resistance to the construction frenzy, ensuring free public access to the coastal beaches and waters, freedom of expression and full access to information, and the like.

Hope today has come to mean achieving aims that keep you marching forward to the next one, not stopping to be completely overwhelmed by the bigger picture. These burgeoning engagements in community action provide me with an injection of optimism. I am not unrealistic; it is hardly a tsunami or even a sea change. But people are getting involved who were not before. They are still invested in that promise of better. For too long, fear has been the primary motivator in Maltese politics, driving patterns of disunity and disintegration. Perhaps that will never change on a national scale. Yet those with capacity can still try to make a difference, whatever that looks like, on their doorsteps; otherwise, it certainly will not.

We have tried misery and apathy. They only bore rotten fruit. Maybe there is still hope. A hope that can sweep an engulfing delusion away. A hope that can do the trick. A new dawn for Malta can still be within our reach.